Doctor Who: The Wedding of River Song Review (4.5/5)

Finales are always hard ones to pull off- I would have given The Parting of the Ways, Doomsday, Last of the Time Lords, Journey's End and The Big Bang the same score as this one, mainly because they couldn't manage to balance the pressure of concluding their respective season arcs and being great standalone stories in their own right. The Wedding of River Song does finally deliver on many of the questions posed throughout the season- the nature of the Silence, River's love of the Doctor, and the Time Lord's death at the hands of Melody Pond- but also provides a rollicking good romp along the way, filled with cameos from past episodes. The effects budget here must have been huge, as the show is looking better than ever, and Steven Moffat was on a roll with his use of the Daleks, alternate realities and the Tesselacta android to solve some of his arc challenges. However, that's not to say the episode was perfect. Like its predecessor The Big Bang, the episode features a major new plot strand that remains completely unresolved by its end (bar the truth behind the Question- who didn't see that one coming?), and this is more than a little annoying given that the Christmas Special is unlikely to feature more than mere hints to the Series Seven arc, not to mention that the show won't be returning proper 'till Autumn 2012. The utterly predictable resolution to the Doctor's death didn't go down well with me either- I'd guessed the Tesselacta would take his place the moment the android returned this ep- especially as the Moff appeared to tease last week that someone else was in the astronaut suit and that there were more surprises to come. I'll give credit where credit's due, though: this finale was as ambitious, exciting and intelligent as Doctor Who has ever been, setting the show off in a completely different direction as the Doc realises his prominent acts of kindness and courage across the universe need to be toned down if he is to avoid the fate he came so close to succumbing to this season. I look forward to finding out why River remembered the Doctor when no-one else did in The Big Bang, what lies on the Fields of Trenzalore and the meaning of the ominous event 'the fall of the Eleventh' next year!